Best Affliction Poems

I marvel how Nature could ever find space
For so many strange contrasts in one human face:
There's thought and no thought, and there's paleness and bloom
And bustle and sluggishness, pleasure and gloom.
...

PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he
knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so
much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my
state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The
...

When thou didst entice to thee my heart,
I thought the service brave:
So many joys I writ down for my part,
Besides what I might have
...

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
...

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
...

In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heav'nly-pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns;
What means this tumult in a vestal's veins?
...

In a wayward adventure in curiosity —
lured away from savvy of cooler judgment,  
he oversteps the bounds of reality 
into a state of altered awareness.
...

Lord, Who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
...

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
...

Dreams are but faceless
Eyes alone are a visible feature
And eyes indeed
Have a quaint crowd
...

963

A nearness to Tremendousness—
An Agony procures—
...

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons--
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes--
...

Sometime now past in the Autumnal Tide,
When Ph{oe}bus wanted but one hour to bed,
The trees all richly clad, yet void of pride,
Were gilded o're by his rich golden head.
Their leaves and fruits seem'd painted but was true
...

Then a ploughman said, "Speak to us of Work."

And he answered, saying:
...

Depression is being tired, when you're never able to sleep
Depression is pity, when you hate other's sympathy
Depression is longing for more, when you never acknowlede what's already there
Depression is the feeling of self-hatred, when the arrogance is concurrently overwhelming
...

I

A traveller on the skirt of Sarum's Plain
Pursued his vagrant way, with feet half bare;
...

It's not the case, though some might wish it so
Who from a window watch the blizzard blow

White riot through their branches vague and stark,
...

If I were a Starlit Night
I would paint the sky
In darkest light
...

Broken in pieces all asunder,
Lord, hunt me not,
A thing forgot,
Once a poor creature, now a wonder,
...

I
MILES STANDISH

In the Old Colony days, in Plymouth the land of the Pilgrims
...

As a beam o'er the face of the waters may glow
While the tide runs in darkness and coldness below,
So the cheek may be tinged with a warm sunny smile,
Though the cold heart to ruin runs darkly the while.
...

Now long and long from wintry Strymon blew
The weary, hungry, anchor-straining blasts,
The winds that wandering seamen dearly rue,
Nor spared the cables worn and groaning masts;
...

799

Despair's advantage is achieved
By suffering—Despair—
...

The slender young woman who is there would be the premier creation by the
Creator in the sphere of women, with fine teeth, lips like a ripe bimba fruit, a
slim waist, eyes like a startled gazelle’s, a deep navel, a gait slow on account
of the weight of her hips, and who is somewhat bowed down by her breasts.
...

Kill me not ev'ry day,
Thou Lord of life, since thy one death for me
Is more than all my deaths can be,
Though I in broken pay
...

Samson. A little onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on;
For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade.
There I am wont to sit, when any chance
...

Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory & of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, & the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.
...

I

(ll. 1-28) Right is it that we praise the King of heaven, the
Lord of hosts, and love Him with all our hearts. For He is great
...

My heart did heave, and there came forth, 'O God'!
By that I knew that thou wast in the grief,
To guide and govern it to my relief,
Making a sceptre of the rod:
...

The word that ignited my incombustile mind,
I raised then the marasmus jowl upward
And opened my sutured mouth.
Eyes were cascading the caged fervour
...

In those days the Evil Spirits,
All the Manitos of mischief,
Fearing Hiawatha's wisdom,
And his love for Chibiabos,
...

951

As Frost is best conceived
By force of its Result—
...

I've quenched my lamp, I struck it in that start
Which every limb convulsed, I heard it fall­
The crash blent with my sleep, I saw depart
Its light, even as I woke, on yonder wall;
...

Take my arm
and keep up your promise!
They call you the refugeless refuge,
they call you redeemer of outcasts.
...

I

Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
...

BOOK I

Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide
...

When first thou didst entice to thee my heart,
I thought the service brave;
So many joys I writ down for my part,
Besides what I might have
...

I am wearing away like the snow in the sun,
I am wearing away from the pain in my heart;
But ne'er shall he know, who my peace has undone,
How bitter, how lasting, how deep is my smart.
...

Scene, on the Cliffs to the Eastward of the Town of
Brighthelmstone in Sussex. Time, a Morning in November, 1792.
...

WHERE o'er my head, the deaf'ning Tempest blew,
And Night's cold lamp cast forth a feeble ray;
Where o'er the woodlands, vivid light'nings flew,
Cleft the strong oak, and scorch'd the blossom'd spray;
...

I fall a prey to great affliction,
Undergo sufferance with botheration.

Why should I undergo pain and fret?
Why should I twitching heartache get?
...

I.
Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child!
Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart?
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,
...

On his death-bed poor Lubin lies:
His spouse is in despair:
With frequent sobs, and mutual cries,
They both express their care.
...

"Had we never loved so kindly,
Had we never loved so blindly,
Never met or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted." — Burns
...

In vain you try
To smother my song:
A million children
In chorus sing it
...

Stroke of a heartless son
Desirably remained an unschooled rascal
Plunging ischemic into a father's mind
Sweep-swindling all the travail of asset
...

I

I came up out of the subway and there were
people standing on the steps as if they knew
something I didn't. This was in the Cold War,
...

Thus then did they fight as it were a flaming fire. Meanwhile the
fleet runner Antilochus, who had been sent as messenger, reached
Achilles, and found him sitting by his tall ships and boding that
which was indeed too surely true. "Alas," said he to himself in the
...

Allahu Akbar!
Allahu Akbar!
From Allah comes today
Rahmat, Kauthar.
...

Rehearse to me ye sacred Sisters nine:
The golden brood of great Apolloes wit,
Those piteous plaints and sorrowful sad tine,
...

PART I

On Susquehanna's side, fair Wyoming!
Although the wild-flower on thy ruin'd wall,
...

'Speak up - no need to shout -I'm not THAT deaf! '
- do I have real reason to complain,
if years of partial listening have brought
now partial hearing in their fateful train?
...

ANGEL of Death! extend thy silent reign!
Stretch thy dark sceptre o’er this new domain
No sable car along the winding road
...

Oh, my beloved companion!
Oh thou of my existence,
The very heart and soul!
...

Poor Martha is old, and her hair is turn'd grey,
And her hearing has left her for many a year;
Ten to one if she knows what it is that you say,
Though she puts her poor wither'd hand close to her ear.
...

[A Report, though false, at that time generally believed.]


Fallen are thy towers, Byzantium! towers that stood
...

I

"O Time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours,
   As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves?
...

[As a Tribute of Esteem and Admiration this Poem is inscribed to ROBERT MERRY, Esq. A. M. Member of the Royal Academy at Florence, and Author of the Laurel of Liberty, and the Della Crusca Poems.]


O THOU, to whom superior worth's allied,
...

SHE fell away in her first ages spring,
Whil'st yet her leafe was greene, and fresh her rinde,
And whil'st her braunch faire blossomes foorth did bring,
She fell away against all course of kinde.
...

When the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum, and The Three Taverns.—(Acts xxviii, 15)


Herodion, Apelles, Amplias,
...

Lord God that dost me save and keep,
All day to thee I cry;
And all night long, before thee weep
Before thee prostrate lie.
...

An insane giant,
moves like heavily drunk,
sometimes runs,
sometimes walk
...

IT was a beautiful and silent day
That overspread the countenance of earth,
Then fading with unusual quietness,--
...

Colin Clouts Come Home Againe
THe shepheards boy (best knowen by that name)
That after Tityrus first sung his lay,
...

'Tis my happiness below
Not to live without the cross,
But the Saviour's power to know,
Sanctifying every loss;
...

IN CUMBERLAND.

Hail , Derwent's beauteous pride!
Whose charms rough rocks in threatening grandeur guard,
...

On an evening, for example, when the naive tourist has retired
from our economic horrors, a master's hand awakens
the meadow's harpsichord;
...

TERRIFIC FIEND! thou Monster fell,
Condemn'd in haunts profane to dwell,
Why quit thy solitary Home,
O'er wide Creation's paths to roam?
...

Come melancholy Moralizer--come!
Gather with me the dark and wintry wreath;
With me engarland now
The SEPULCHRE OF TIME!
...

It is narrated that one of the kings of Persia had stretched forth
his tyrannical hand to the possessions of his subjects and had begun
to oppress them so violently that in consequence of his fraudulent
extortions they dispersed in the world and chose exile on account of
...

THE MAIDEN.

I'VE seen him before me!
What rapture steals o'er me!
...

SWEET BIRD OF SORROW! ­why complain
In such soft melody of Song,
That ECHO, am'rous of thy Strain,
The ling'ring cadence doth prolong?
...

Though nature weigh our talents, and dispense
To every man his modicum of sense,
And Conversation in its better part
...

Eternal and all-working God, which wast
Before the world, whose frame by Thee was cast,
And beautified with beamful lamps above,
By thy great wisdom set how they should move
...

Will then, Duperrier, thy sorrow be eternal?
And shall the sad discourse
Whispered within thy heart, by tenderness paternal,
...

"Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,
"How often must it love, how often hate,
"How often hope, despair, resent, regret,
"Conceal, disdain, do all things, but forget."
...

WHAT song is best for the soldiers?
Take no heed of the words, nor choose yon the style of the story;
Let it burst out from the heart like a spring from the womb of a mountain,
Natural, clear, resistless, leaping its way to the levels;
...

I am wearing away like the snow in the sun,
I am wearing away from the pain in my heart;
...

FOUR times the sun had risen and set; and now on the fifth day
Cheerily called the cock to the sleeping maids of the farm-house.
...

1
Spirit of earth! thy hand is chill.
I've felt its icy clasp;
And shuddering I remember still
...

Oh, Friend! for ever loved, for ever dear!
What fruitless tears have bathed thy honour'd bier!
What sighs re'echo'd to thy parting breath,
Wilst thou wast struggling in the pangs of death!
...

Heroes of elder days! untaught to yield,
Who bled for Spain on many an ancient field;
Ye, that around the oaken cross of yore
...

IT is the Christmas time:
And up and down 'twixt heaven and earth,
In glorious grief and solemn mirth,
The shining angels climb.
...

MILES and miles of quiet houses, every house a harbour,
Each for some unquiet soul a haven and a home,
Pleasant fires for winter nights, for sun the trellised arbour,
Earth the solid underfoot, and heaven for a dome.
...

Gloomy cliffs, so worn and wasted with the washing of the waves,
Are ye not like giant tombstones round those lonely ocean graves?
...

Of Prometheus, how undaunted
On Olympus' shining bastions
His audacious foot he planted,
...

THE knell of death, that on the twilight gale,
Swells its deep murmur to the pensive ear;
In awful sounds repeats a mournful tale,
And claims the tribute of a tender tear.
...

1 I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.

2 He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.
...

_Deere Chryste, let not the cheere of earth,
To fill our hearts with heedless mirth
This holy Christmasse time;
...

Praise God! Yes! He's the only 1 who is truly Awesome,
Hell No! Satan is simply not all that powerful and great,
What kind of lord and master gets locked in a bottomless bit?
Especially without his own key to unlock the gate?
...

She sleeps—and I see through a shadowy haze,
Where the hopes of the past and the dreams that I cherished
...

I am afflicted with those memories,
sometimes, I'm glad that I have them,
sometimes, I feel cursed that they are me,
sometimes , I'm not sure how I feel,
...

When faint and sad o'er sorrow's desert wild
Slow journeys onward poor misfortune's child;
When fades each lovely form by fancy drest,
...

WHEN God drave the ruthless waters
From our cornfields to the sea,
Came she where our wives and daughters
Sobbed their thanks on bended knee.
...

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Why art thou so far from helping me,
And from the words of my roaring?
O my God, I cry in the day-time,
...

WHERE shall we seek for a hero, and where shall we find a story?
Our laurels are wreathed for conquest, our songs for completed glory.
But we honor a shrine unfinished, a column uncapped with pride,
If we sing the deed that was sown like seed when Crispus Attucks died
...

NO more my wearied soul attempts to stray
From sad reality and vain regret,
Nor courts enchanting fiction to allay
...

Thank Heaven, the burthens on the heart
Are not half known till they depart!
...

'TWAS summer eve; the changeful beams still play'd
On the fir-bark and through the beechen shade;
...

I.

While envious crowds the summit view,
Where Danger with Ambition strays;
...